Collection of early folk music source material

I found this book while kicking around Wikipedia today. It seems to contain a lot of ballads that would later become American Folk songs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Ballads

The American music tradition

I've been spending a LOT of time with Bob Dylan's music lately. I've always had respect for Bob, although I never real dug that deeply into his catalog. I've been digging about as deep as I can as of late, scouring the internets for bootlegs and rare live outtakes. Listening to Bob really does something to you, he's a living text book of American music. He has the tradition of American music within him, no, he has become American music tradition. You can hear it in the songs, he's not trying to sound like early folk, or early blues, or country, he just does. It really is like the music flows through him, like he's a conduit for it. It's effortless, you can hear it in every note. Nothing is strained, if you listen to Bringing it All Back Home, you will hear almost everything to come in contemporary popular song. And he does this all in a manner that sounds like it was meant to be the this way. Like the album simply had to be made and was waiting for the right person to make it. Like the music chose Bob, and not the other way around. The very man who refused to be defined by the expectations that his audience had for him, has become such a huge icon of American music.

I was listening to Woody Guthrie well before I started my exploration of Dylan's work, I was also very familiar with the early blues and rootsy traditions of Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, and Son House. I've always had a fascination with hearing something a little older and more influential than the last thing I had heard. I loved trying to get to the roots of this American music tree and then winding my way up through the little branches and leaves that spread out from it. You end up at so many wonderful places, garage rock, psych rock, punk rock, indie rock hip-hop, they are all so deeply rooted in the traditions and spirit and exuberance of early American music. As you wander the path you find very few artists that seem to carry a little bit of each progression that music made on it's way to them. Woody had it, Bob has it. I feel like Lou Reed has it, Patty Smith has it. Allen Ginsberg has it. But, to me the one guy who has it over everybody except for Bob, is Jack White. That man really is a walking American songbook. He lives it, and breathes it, and speaks it. And he does know his song well before he starts singing.

It's a little embarrassing the way I learned about the White Stripes. I'm not ashamed to tell the story though, I saw the video for Hotel Yorba on MTV2. There it is I learned of the White Stripes after they were already in MTV. Sad, I know. But sometimes you just miss stuff. But, when I went back and listened to their first album I was blow away. Here was this kid, playing with only drum accompaniment doing Robert Johnson and "Blind" Willie Johnson covers. He had balls, huge ones. Jack has a "Basement Tape" in him somewhere, I want him to sit down and play everything he knows from the American tradition and record it and release it. The music flows through Jack, he doesn't have to force anything, he is American music.

I've gotten myself into such a strange space, I want to spend a year or two in a room with a record player and whatever record I need to listen to at that moment. I don't need to eat or sleep or talk to anyone. I just need to immerse myself in the amazingness of the American sonic tradition. I want to hear it all, country tearjerkers, sonic room filling jazz, slave songs, hopscotch songs, field hollers, gospel calls, protest folk, blues, all of it. Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds, Gram Parsons, Beck, Muddy Waters, Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings, Eddie Cochrane, Buddy Holly, Ike Turner, Phil Spector, The Band, Chuck Berry, Led Zeppelin, Little Richard, Nirvana, The Flaming Lips, Brian Wilson, Sonic Youth, Wilco, My Morning Jacket, Black Lips, Miles Davis. I want to hear them all I want to sit and make connections, piece it all together like a quilt. A sonic quilt that can wrap us all up and keep us warm with musical salvation. Rock 'n' Roll has the power to destroy evil, it helped to destroy racial divides. Woody Guthrie would write on all his guitars that "this machine kills fascists" and I believe him. Grab something powerful from your music collection this weekend and put it on, play it really loud, yell along with the lyrics. Let it free you.

Manny says who cares about ALCS

Manny Ramirez told a bunch of reporters at a news conference after losing game 4 of the ALCS to go down 3-1 in the series, "If we don't do it, we'll come back next year and try again. If it doesn't happen, who cares? There's always next year. It's not the end of the world."

The reaction has been crazy. He also celebrated a solo home run, that merely cut a lead, as though it was a game winning walk off shot. All this has many people in the press up in arms. I had a lot of thoughts on this story. Mostly to do with the fact that the Red Sox have made a bunch of moves for some high dollar players that haven't jack in the post season. And yet Manny has hit .429 with 4 home runs, one of them a series winning walk off, and 11 RBIs. Yet he is going to get heat for saying something after the game.

Dan Wetzel from Yahoo sports said it all a lot better than I could have though. So I will just link to his article. Good stuff.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=Ail77i7Y65z5hm1seOhTUDcRvLYF?slug=dw-manny101707&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

Now he puts the Lou in Loser.

What the hell happened to "sweet" Lou Piniella? He's one of the greats. He won a World Series in 1990 with the Reds, and has been back to the post season 5 times since. But in game one of his Cub's NLDS against the Arizona Diamondbacks he made the same mistake he would have been slamming from the announcers booth last year. Instead of playing each game as it's own game he started thinking about a game that might not even get played.

He had his ace on the mound, Carlos Zambrano. He was pitching a strong game, he was locked in a 1-1 tie, he had just retired 9 of the last 11 he had faced. Then without warning, in the sixth inning, after only 85 pitches, sweet Lou pulls him. The next batter at the plate hits the game winning home run.

Lou would later say in the post game press conference that he wanted Zambrano fresh should he need him again in a "potential" game 4. Someone forgot to tell Lou that on the schedule for the series it says "if necessary" next to games 4 and 5. If you win game 1 that forces the other guys to worry about making game 4 happen. You don't need to worry about that game till it happens. Win the game that you're playing, not the one you may or may not have to play.

Of course if the Cubs had won the game, and then needed to play a game 4 everyone, myself included would have been calling Sweet Lou a managerial genius. Such is life when you take risks. He said he had faith in his bullpen, that they have been there for him all year. But, the post season is different, games are won and lost on momentum swings, and pulling a pitcher who has the other team funked, for no reason sends a message. The Cub's players and the Diamondback's players got that message loud and clear. The Cub's were slumped over on the field, they were defeated. They felt like they had the game, they had their best man on the mound, he had his best stuff. Many D'backs players were quoted after the game saying that they thought it was Zambrano's game. They weren't quite sure why Piniella pulled him, but they sure were happy he did.

The Cubs lost game 2 in Arizona as well, and they sure look like the will be ending yet another fruitless run at the title that has eluded them for 99 years. It turns out Lou might have been saving Zambrano's arm for the 2008 opener.

Radiohead's going all Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

With their contract at Capitol expired, and no new label signed to, Radiohead is selling their new album, In Rainbows, out 10/10/07 only through their website. The price, whatever you feel like paying. That's right give them whatever you feel the music yr. downloading is worth. Even zero dollars will get you the download. I think this is a bold move for them, but given the fan base they have I think they will still move lots of "units". They had an album debut at number one on Billboard with no radio singles after all.

So will the success of this album prompt other artists who would rather not be on a label, but possess large devoted fan bases to throw off the constraints of the music machine and sell their art for whatever people are willing to pay. I could see R.E.M. doing something like this in the near future, although they seem to need a producer present to make the most of their music, and those will usually take corporate money to hire.

This also raises the question of sales tracking, will the album be on the Billboard charts? Will these sales be tracked? Could this be the future of digital music? Will bands start making music in their own studios and then distribute it online in form of pay what you want DRM free MP3s? Would such a thing be good for music in general? Image would start to play less of a factor. A band would have to establish a fan base through touring, or the wonder of myspace music.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah did this very thing with their first album, which is quite good by the way. They built a fan base through myspace and other online "salons" and released an album that was self published and sold only through their website. They were able to move 50,000 units simply through live shows, online word of mouth, as well as real life word of mouth. Quite a feat in this day and age of mass produced and prepackaged garbage music.

I am quite excited to see what will happen with this Radiohead launch, I think they will do quite well. The industry will ignore it, and in 3 or 4 years when CD sales have reached even new lows, and the disposable music they are trying to cram down yr. throats no longer excites even the preteens that they are trying so desperately to get hooked on it. They will say how much illegal downloads of music and all sorts of other BS is killing the industry.